CHENNAI: Fresh data from the National Family Health Survey-4 shows Chennai has the most health-insured people among all metros, followed by Hyderabad. The data says almost all metros have more than doubled their insured population in the past 10 years, in a pace that global organisations say have not witnessed anywhere else in the world.
Households covered by health insurance in Chennai is 56.9 per cent, followed by Hyderabad with 49.8 per cent and Kolkata with 26.1 per cent. The lowest is Mumbai with an coverage of mere 12.4 per cent. Data for New Delhi is yet to be released. With the government's health insurance scheme that covers nearly 50 million people in Tamil Nadu, more than half of Chennai's households have a member covered by a health scheme or health insurance. More than three-fifth of the people in Tamil Nadu got insurance in the last decade, lowering the number of uninsured by 60 per cent from 2005-06. At the national level, 17 per cent of the population was under the health net until 2014.
Experts link the leap in numbers to the state-sponsored health insurance schemes in TN, Kerala, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. The climb began when a state-sponsored scheme was launched by the DMK government in July 2009, two years after the AP government launched its Arogyashri. In 2012, the AIADMK regime upgraded the scheme and extended its coverage to include some 15 million families. While state insurance is available to the poor, many in the middle and upper-income group now have a company-sponsored insurance or an individual insurance.
